so I get asked all the time how can I find a mentor for my business and finding a mentor for your business can really help you because a large fraction of all successful entrepreneurs credit a lot of their success to their mentors and mentors can help you with insights that you aren't available to you otherwise they can share their experience they can provide you emotional support at critical times mentors are really valuable so this is something that's worth the effort now ultimately what a mentor is is somebody that cares emotionally about whether or not you're gonna be successful so this is something that takes some time to develop we're talking about developing a relationship with a person that may or may not know you and ultimately the type of mentor that you want to find that somebody whose experiences will be useful to you in as you go about creating your business so maybe somebody who's created a similar business or gone through you know started from a place that's similar to yours economically or emotionally or geographically or somebody that ultimately you would fantasize about how being emotionally bought into helping you succeed it doesn't have to be a person that you know because ultimately what you want to use is the skill of relationship building it's a skill that I talk about a lot my first book startup leadership there's a whole chapter on relationship building but the key to building a relationship with a person that you may not know at all okay is creating a shared objective a shared bond and when you don't know the person the way you start is by saying how much you admire what they've done and you let them know that you're a fan and this has to be sincere and you have to really admire this person and you're telling them why you admire them and when you tell them that you admire them you're often going to be able to ask to meet them just for a short period of time we're talking about 10 minutes 15 minutes max that's what you're gonna ask for and you're gonna do it and by either an email that with something like a headline of I just wanted to let you know I'm a big fan of what you've done those type of emails they get through the personal assistants they're the emails that we all feel emotionally rewarded for reading right so when I had a big company and people you know sent me emails like that my assistants said hey you might want to read this it'll make your day okay so that's the sort of email that you're writing is something that's gonna make their day hey I'm a big family and then you're gonna ask for 10 or 15 minutes to visit that person sometime in their office or where they hang out not more okay you're going to ask to meet them very high probability that they'll say yes it'll be 10 minutes it will be rushed in and during those 10 minutes you'll want to reiterate that you're a big fan but you'll want to ask two or three questions about hey I really admire what you've done here's a situation what would you advise me to do in this situation just one or two and the person will be engaged and hopefully you need to make it something that that person has experience in and would want want to answer and share with you their ideas then you're going to take those ideas and you're gonna actually use their advice and within a couple of weeks or at most a couple of months you're gonna write back a note to that person saying I just want you to know that your advice was spectacular and it worked great here's what happened and that's going to make that person remember you and emotionally be you know feel good about your name and that time that they spent together and that gives you an opening to go back to that person and as a follow up and say hey you know what could you give me advice on this other thing and maybe that advice will just be given by email or maybe you ask for another 10 minutes but the more you go back and say hey you're at advice really made a huge difference and I'm even a greater fan now the more the stronger your emotional bond is going to get with that person know that's what's gonna make them ultimately care about your success and be a mentor and ultimately you'll get to the point where that person will say hey you know any time you want to ask advice I'm gonna be here for you so and it works and this is a great way to proceed with finding your mentor